[pianotech] Stealth temperaments

[Ron Nossaman]

On 5/1/2012 6:13 AM, Joseph Giandalone wrote:

> It seems to me that much of what we hear when we hear music, is what we
> EXPECT to hear – that is, we have absorbed a 12-tone equal-temperament
> scale from the time we were little babies, so that is what we hear.

I quite agree, and temperament is only a very small part of the whole. 
Techs are much worse than the general populous, and probably as bad as 
the very worst of the prima donna concert type about this. Having set 
through a couple of temperament classes, I heard the tone 
characteristics of the pianos. I heard the unison tuning, the tonal 
balance of the instruments, the clarity (or lack thereof) in the top 
half, and the voicing. The overall effect of the temperament on the 
music, I confess, mostly escaped me.

Temperament has the advantage of being dead easy to change compared to 
anything else producing subjective piano "tone", if you are an ETD user, 
so if someone wishes to try it and finds it beneficial to their 
business, happy day. Making a customer happy by doing nothing more than 
dialing up a different temperament on the machine is a free lunch except 
when they aren't impressed. It's just another tool among many at our 
disposal. I find even a little touch up voicing to be pretty popular too.
Ron N